You want them to feel shame. If you’re like me, you do. Anthemideae tribe. Hardy, but this vivid during a drought? For shame. Cobbled yellow together like little flickers of coiled cool sunlight preserved from the source undiluted. A frozen detonation nodding in the dry breeze. Not beautiful. Impossible.My role in all of this is relatively simple. Draw the attention of the cliche nosey neighbor whatever his name is and make him knock - polite, vigorous - on the widow and child’s door. Not ring the bell. Three perfectly ominous knocks...minimalist. Two knocks is an accident or a stray sound fluttering around the baseboards of the house. Four knocks is routine. Nine knocks is someone unsure of their own authority. She’ll not yet have seen me - horrifyingly alive - and begin talking before she evens open the door to answer.

I know, I’m sorry, he ran outside and turned on the sprinkler before I was even out of bed. I gave him a talking to, don’t worry he won’t do it again.

“Did he water your garden, too?” Nosey neighbor who cares what his legal name is says this playfully, but his smile is stretched thin. He is definitely the nosey neighbor.

What do you mean? She’ll be genuinely and truly confused. She forgot she had a garden.

“Your side yard garden is looking good, very healthy…” Delivered this time with more sincerity.

Thank you… But she’s still confused and can sense the psychological bulge insinuating itself in praise. There’s something under there.

“Everyone else’s has died in this heat. It’s just not fair if you water your garden during the ban, right? You agree?”

I haven’t though! I haven’t watered it!

“That’s a chrysanthemum, full bloom. You’re saying you didn’t water it?” Still very playful. Her responses are playful too. They’re reacting to each other, I’m posted up around the corner of the house still shimmering color gauzy in the heated, displaced air.

Look, I’m telling you, I didn’t. Maybe it’s just hardy. A hardy flower. My husband bought it for us before he deployed…

“Oh…”

Oh?

The neighbor isn’t embarrassed here, but he sells it convincingly. It’s an out, he’s not comfortable with aggression. It’s an out. The widow’s late soldier husband, of course.

“I’m sorry...Look, I understand…”

You understand?

Spread the word? But I didn’t water anything! I’ve been complying with the ban!

But he’ll already have left her field of vision. She’ll step onto the porch and crane her neck around the corner and look at her flower garden, in the opposite direction of her departing neighbor. I’m punctuating the mostly dead rectangle of vegetation. I should terrify her.

In theory, that’s how this works. Shame and then confusion and then terror. My roots trembling towards some secret source she wants no knowledge of.